Business and Finance Information

Self Directed IRA Accounts Top Money Management Solutions

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:32 +0000

A self directed IRA account offers freedom that is unmatched with a traditional IRA account. Owning a traditional IRA account requires obtaining approval of an IRA custodian for any money management changes. In the alternative, a self directed IRA account allows one to manage money without the extra red tape of an IRA custodian.

In addition to the enjoyment of additional freedom with a truly self directed IRA account, owners also enjoy a lack of custodial fees. When an IRA custodian manages a traditional IRA, custodial fees can eat into the principal amount of funds in the account. An account owner may even be charged a fee every time that profits are calculated or for simply making a transaction. When IRA funds are contained in an LLC account, then owners only must pay a flat annum fee. This fee is also relatively small compared to custodial fees charged with a traditional Account of IRA.

An IRA LLC arrangement is beneficial for other reasons. Being able to shield funds from aggressive litigators and creditors is one reason people typically place funds in an IRA LLC account. Once the funds are placed into this type of account, litigators and creditors will be unable to access the funds. In addition to protecting funds in this way, IRA LLC arrangements also cut down on the extraneous fees that one must pay. With a self directed IRA, an account owner does not have to pay a transaction fee each time he or she requests a disbursement check.

The manageability of a self directed IRA account also makes it a solid choice. An owner of this type of account is the only named signor on the account. As a result, all of his or her checkbooks and debit cards are associated with the account.

Funds can be divided in multiple ways with the use of a self directed IRA service. When one chooses this service, he or she can place funds into raw land, commercial property, investment property, foreign real estate, discounted notes and tax liens. To divvy up funds, an account owner only needs to write a simple check. The manageability of these types of accounts is a draw for account owners who appreciate independence in the management of their wealth.

Because no IRA custodian is associated with self directed IRAs, there is no tedious paperwork involved in the process. An IRA custodian can essentially act as a pestering bureaucrat in the retirement planning process. An IRA custodian will be required to report the entire worth of an account of IRA to the government on an annual basis. In addition, an IRA custodian will offer paperwork on the rules governing accounts of IRA and laws affecting them as well. By having a self directed IRA account, one need not worry about these sorts of bureaucrats.

Before you go ahead with a pension account it is a good idea to understand the self directed IRA rules. This is explained on our web site along with other issues such as self directed IRA real estate.

Should Public Sector Organisations Care About Introducing E-Billing?

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:32 +0000

The “public sector” is obviously a catch-all term and one which envelopes large national government departments such as defence (including all the armed forces), education (including state-run schools and colleges), employment, social security or tax) and smaller local government entities such as urban and rural councils. In addition, it also includes more directly community-focused organisations such as hospitals (of all sizes and kinds), the fire service and the police, etc. Clearly, this represents a wide range of very diverse types of organisation whose needs are likely to vary greatly when it comes to the flow of money in an out. Of course, not all of these organisations send out a bill or invoice or even provide a receipt. However, they all buy products and services of one kind or another and will often have some kind of internal charging method for services rendered (however infrequent this may be).

This means that the vast majority of public sector organisations receive or issue bills (especially where they deal with consumers directly) and the volume can be very high. This is true of large council organisations, medical clinics and tax departments for instance and in some single organisations can run into millions of bills each year. For example, both the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Driver Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) in the UK issue over 20 million bills a year to consumers alone. We will therefore assume that for the purposes of this article that we are referring to the whole public sector, which includes Government to Government (G2G), Government to Business (G2B) and Government to Consumer (G2C) billing.

Based on the volumes of invoices generated (estimated to be over 2 billion bills/ invoices a year across the entire UK public sector), the automation of billing and payment collection processes (to create greater efficiency) should be a primary concern of most governmental entities. However, the evidence suggests that the generally slow take up of new approaches and online technology in particular has arisen from both many perceived barriers and a lack of perceived benefits versus commercial companies. Let’s therefore look at each of these factors in turn.

The Perceived Barriers

Although there are others, there are five main perceptions that public sector organisations often have about e-billing and payment. These are listed below:

1. Billing projects are IT focused and there is not the time, budget or expertise to tackle this readily. There is also a long list of other IT projects to address

There are now several “cloud-based” billing systems that are fully built and involve minimal IT involvement on the client side. This means that the client expertise and resources needed to support the change can be very low and a solution can be up and running quickly even when other IT projects are a high priority.

2. Billing software or technology can never be used “out of the box”

There are several bill presentment and payment options that do not involve “shipping” software or even involve much in the way of integration. In a cloud-based solution for example, bills can be presented and payment systems opened up within a few days or weeks at most (even in a large organisation).

3. Billing vendors will need to provide all necessary project management skills to make a change successful

This is true but the project management and account management expertise is often very high on the vendor side and frees up a client organisation and its precious resources. In addition, private cloud-based solutions, for example are “bolted on” to provide an additional channel and do not disrupt existing processes or technology at all.

4. The budget for an e-billing and payment project will always be high and is often very hard to control

With cloud-based online presentment and payment solutions there is usually no up-front capital costs at all and no maintenance or seat fees to pay. The whole system can be used on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. In addition control is provided to the client through the system “back-end” so that all activity can be readily seen and reported on in multiple ways to aid decision-making.

5. There are insufficient internal people resources or expertise to implement a change of this scale (quickly enough or at all).

Because cloud-based solutions are already built, implementation can often be done in days and with only one often part-time internal resource as a liaison. The newly adopted e-billing channel is simply promoted to client’s consumers or other payers and they can start to use it immediately. This approach therefore tends to take pressure off internal staff rather than add it.

As we can see from the “other possible responses” column above then, there are other ways to see this transition which may overcome the particular perceived barrier, especially as new internet based technology and far greater use of online payment processes (such as Internet banking) has emerged in recent years.

The Perceived Benefits

A manager in the public sector can review the commonly perceived benefits of e-billing as easily as a private sector manager can do so. However, he or she may feel that these benefits may not apply as much or even at all in some cases. In the chart below, we have listed six of the major perceived benefits of modern internet based e-billing and payment portals and commented on the likely applicability of each to both private and public sector organisations.

Features of a modern E-billing/payment system: High Capability

Capability refers to the functional ability to actually use a particular payment type or channel. This includes additional payment options such as payment by cash, credit, debit etc.

Benefits to the Private Sector Organisation

More and more customers and businesses are going online to view a bill and pay now. Evolving online presentment and payment portals are capable of adding many more capability features constantly and to add to the platforms through which viewing or payment may be rendered (smart phones and tablets for example).